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Explanation of how the number of participants for analysis was determined.
Includes whether analysis was per protocol, intention to treat, or another method.
Also provides relevant details such as imputation technique, as appropriate.

Participants enrolled in the trial were in HIV care and had low CD4 count results requiring a prompt return to clinic as advised by a study clinician.

Reporting Groups

Description

Pre-Intervention Control Group

Eligible participants from a pre-intervention period (January-August 2012) prior to their receiving SMS messages about their laboratory test results. During the pre-intervention stage, clinicians completed eligibility forms for each participant, including confirmation of access to a cellular phone, district of residence, and selection of the abnormal result threshold for the cluster of differentiation 4 (CD4) test, which would prompt a request for an early return to clinic. Standard clinical forms were completed to collect data on sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. We also collected data on the laboratory result and result date, time from laboratory result to clinic return, and for antiretroviral therapy (ART) naive participants, time to ART initiation.

Intervention Period

Participants in the intervention period (September 2012 – November 2013) were receive daily short message service (SMS) messages for up to seven days in one of three formats: 1) messages reporting an abnormal result directly, 2) personal identification number-protected messages reporting an abnormal result, or 3) messages reading “ABCDEFG” to confidentially convey an abnormal result.

For our a priori hypothesis, we aimed to test whether clinical outcomes, i.e. time to clinic return and time to ART initiation, were different in the pre-intervention and intervention period. This was a non-randomized allocation.

During the intervention period, clinicians used eligibility criteria identical to those used during the pre-intervention period, including selection of an abnormal cluster of differentiation 4 (CD4) count threshold to trigger the SMS and transportation reimbursement intervention.